Can't edit user accounts or profiles

[petercotton]

I'm working on a compute for a friend. He wanted me to work on it because the IT people who used to do work on the computers at his work no longer are doing service for them. His problem is that his account doesn't have administrator privileges so he isn't able to upgrade anything or install anything new.

First off I had to use a program to reset the password to the Admin account so I could go in and update everything and delete unneeded applications. That went fine. However, unlike on most computers, I'm unable to edit any user profiles. In fact, even though there are several different accounts that can be logged on to, they do not show up in User Accounts. Even the Admin account cannot access them or make changes to them.

Here are some pictures to show what I mean.

Logged into Administrator account with a view into the Users folder on C:. As you can see there are many accounts on the computer, but I can't make changes to any of them but the Admin one.

How each of their accounts look when opening them from Control Panel:

And that's in contrast to my home computer which has many more options:

Finally, a pic showing that even with all the other accounts on the computer, this is the only one I can manage.

So, in conclusion, is there anything I can do so I can get his account to have Admin privileges? I've never seen anything like this where I can't make changes to any other accounts, or even access them from the Admin account.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give.

 

[Faladu]

I think you may want to look at this:

How to reset all Windows 7 or Vista Security settings to its default values

Probably a bit of work via command prompt is in order.

Wondering if you might do some user tickering in safe mode, also.

Someone else will likely chime in with more experience on accounts, but I dug up that and sounded good to me, policies look like in shambles on that system.

My main corporate experience with Windows account juggling was back with NT 4.0. [I got MCP in NT 4.0 in '99]

 

[VistaKing]

Looking at the picture the user Administrator already has admin rights . He's in the Administrators group

 

[VistaKing]

Add the user name to the Administators group . To do this you need admin rights

Right click on Computer and choose Manage

Go into Local Users and Groups, into Groups, then double click Administrators

Click on the Add button

Insert user name , then click on Check Names

The full name of the person should appear, click OK and it adds the user name to the Administrators group

 

[petercotton]

Add the user name to the Administators group . To do this you need admin rights
Right click on Computer and choose Manage
Go into Local Users and Groups, into Groups, then double click Administrators
Click on the Add button
Insert user name , then click on Check Names
The full name of the person should appear, click OK and it adds the user name to the Administrators group

Tried that, but it didn't work. Kept giving me an error saying an object with that name could not be found. Does it make any difference that when I log on with his username it is shown as COM\username ?

I'll play around with it some more tomorrow and try out the command prompt stuff.

 

[VistaKing]

Are you logging into the domain or the local machine ? You would need local Admin rights to add him to the Administrators group . Looks like you're logging into the machine with his username that he logs into the domain . Companies don't want users installing software . That is done unattended in domain environments . Same goes with Windows Updates . His IT department should give him admin rights to his laptop .

 

[petercotton]

Thanks for all the help. After trying the instructions given by VistaKing I was able to get it working the way I wanted. I had to follow those instructions but had to add an extra step of going into the Advanced menu and clicking Find Now to get a list of the users on the computer. I was then able to add Administrative rights for him. Thanks again!!

 

[VistaKing]

You're welcome . Glad you got it working .